'With a handshake we said more about peace than anything else ever could'

12:01AM GMT 14 Nov 2004

Harry Patch vowed that he would never return to the battlefields but when the First World War veteran met an old enemy in Ypres, the two formed an unlikely bond. Olga Craig reports

This morning, as royalty, dignitaries and ex-service men gather at war memorials across the country to pay tribute to the British soldiers who died in the two world wars and all the conflicts since, Harry Patch will sit alone, reading and re-reading a treasured letter.

At 106, Harry's eyesight is not what it once was: the letter, though brief, is written in stilted English and its looping script is difficult for Harry to read. The words, however, he has committed to memory.

Three weeks ago, Harry, who fought at Passchendaele in 1917 and is one of only 20 surviving British First World War veterans, made the long journey to the western Belgian town of Ypres to meet Charles Kuentz, 107, Germany's only living Great War survivor. It was a poignant and emotion-filled moment for both men when, amid the green fields that now mark the site of the third battle of Ypres, one of the bloodiest battles, they hesitantly shook hands: two former foes forging a new friendship, 87 years after they fought on opposite sides.

After the meeting, Harry, who lives in a nursing home in Wells, Somerset, received a letter from Mr Kuentz, which, he believes, sums up the pact of friendship, borne of shared memories, that now exists between them. "Shaking your hand was an honour," wrote Mr Kuentz, "and with that handshake we said more about peace than anything else ever could. On Sunday, I shall think of you, old comrade."

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It is because of that letter that today, Remembrance Sunday, when the nation commemorates the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 when the guns on the Western Front fell silent and the First World War ended, Harry wants to be alone, reliving the moment that he and Mr Kuentz sealed their truce. "There was a time when to have shaken the hand of the enemy would have been treason, but now all Charles and I want to see is peace," he says. "We have both long been pacifists; we both think that war is simply authorised murder. And we have so much more in common than I could ever have thought," he says. "I have had 87 years to think about the war and all that happened. It was time to offer the hand of friendship."

Though Harry needs a walking frame to get about, his mind is active and his memory acute. His meeting with Mr Kuentz has meant much to him. "After we had talked, we both sat in silence, looking at the landscape. Both of us remembering the stench, the noise, the gas, the mud crusted with blood, the cries of fallen comrades. I don't think it is possible to truly explain the bond that is forged between a soldier in the trenches and his fellow soldiers. There you all are, no matter what your life in civvy street, covered in lice, desperately hungry, eking out the small treats - the ounce of tobacco, the biscuit. You relied on him and he on you, never really thinking that it was just the same for the enemy. But it was, it was every bit as bad. Me and Charles, we were both fighting because we were told to. Neither of us wants any other young man to go through what we did again - but still we send our lads to war. In Iraq, our young men are still being killed, told to kill."

As Harry walked across the wasteland in Ypres - known to the British soldiers as Wipers - to meet his German counterpart, the memories came thick and fast. "I remember, clear as a bell, going over the top. A German soldier came running towards me, bayonet fixed. I fired and hit him in the shoulder and still he kept coming, his bayonet pointing at my chest.

"The whole scene played itself out in slow motion as I walked towards Charles. I could see that young soldier, wounded but still stumbling towards me. That day, all those years ago, I had just seconds to decide. Should I obey my oath to King and country or follow the law of Moses: Thou shalt not kill. I was an expert marksman, so I shot him in the ankle and then in the knee. The war was over for him then, and I like to think that he went home to rejoin his family."

As the pair met, the greetings were faltering. Mr Kuentz, who now lives in Alsace-Lorraine, speaks no English, and Harry speaks no other language. "We had a translator but, before long, just a word was enough to convey what we both felt."

Like Herr Kuentz, Harry was a conscript, an apprentice plumber called up at 18. "From the time I landed in Belgium, a fortnight before my 19th birthday in June 1917, until I was wounded on October 23 that year, I never had a bath, never had a change of clothes.

"None of us was older than 21. We knew nothing of war. We alternated between four days and three nights in the trenches and then four days behind the lines to rest. You slept when you could. All the time you itched - we were covered in lice.

"It was camaraderie that kept us going. We shared everything. The only things to drink were weak tea or water. As for food, all I remember are Crosse & Blackwell's plum and apple jam, bully beef and dog biscuits. The biscuits were so hard that we threw them away.

"I remember watching two starving dogs fighting over a biscuit. I can remember thinking: 'Those two animals are fighting over food to save their lives. But what the hell are we, two supposedly civilised nations, fighting over?' "

Shortly before he was wounded, Harry stumbled across a scene that has haunted him ever since. "The fighting had been fierce all day and the light was beginning to fade. I half fell down a ridge, straight into a corporal - from my own regiment - who been ripped from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel. A bullet wound is clean, but shrapnel tears you to pieces. There was nothing I could do but sit with him. I sat holding his hand for the last 60 seconds of his life.

"He said only one word, I shall never forget it. The only thing he said was, 'mother'. His face is as clear to me today as it was that day. Some mother, somewhere, received the awful news. I wish I had taken his tags, so that I could have written to her."

Harry was wounded at Pilkem Ridge, the site of his meeting with Mr Kuentz. A shell hit his dug-out, killing three of his comrades. "Nothing of them was found," he says. "Not a shred." Harry was hit by shrapnel, a two-inch piece embedded itself in his groin. He lapsed into unconsciousness and woke up in a field hospital. The doctor had no anaesthetic. "A couple of men held me down and the medic cut the shrapnel out with a kitchen knife."

After he returned home, Harry, along with thousands of veterans, tried to put the war behind him. he never watches war films and, for years, he never spoke of his experiences. He rarely talked to his two children - now both dead - or his late wife, of his memories of the Great War.

He swore that he would never return to the scene of battle. Then, two years ago, he was asked to go to Belgium for the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Menin Gate memorial, dedicated to the fallen whose bodies were never recovered.

"Do you know," he says, his care-worn face breaking into a smile, "that was the first time in my life I got a passport. The first time I went to Belgium, a rifle was all I needed. It was a sobering moment, reading all those names. But the sad thing was that so few of us knew each others' surname - we used first names and nicknames. I couldn't find my old mates. But I see their faces in my dreams."

This morning, Harry will attend a church service in Wells. He has turned down several invitations - among them the chance to take part in the Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph in London - on doctor's orders.

"I will remember quietly. My memories and those that Charles Kuentz has told me. And I will read my letter again."